No apologies from Club for Growth

Since the GOP’s drubbing at the ballot box last month, most of the party’s institutions – elected Republican leaders, advocacy groups, campaign committees and more – have engaged in some level of soul-searching about what on earth went wrong.

And then there’s the Club for Growth.

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The conservative outside group amassed a decidedly mixed record in 2012, spending millions to support hardline candidates in primaries and general elections. Blamed by some in the Republican establishment for foisting unelectable candidates on the GOP – inept Indiana Senate nominee Richard Mourdock, for one – the Club is utterly unapologetic for its slash-and-burn approach to intra-party politics.

The organization’s modus operandi was on vivid display once again this week, as the Club’s leadership called for the defeat of House Speaker John Boehner’s “Plan B” proposal to resolve the fiscal cliff, calling it an unacceptable combination of tax increases and phony spending cuts. That meant staking out ground to the right of even Americans for Tax Reform and its leader, high-profile activist Grover Norquist, who gave Republicans a free pass to support a measure that wouldn’t have averted tax increases on Americans earning more than $1 million per year.

The Club wasn’t the only entity on the right to oppose Plan B – the behemoth independent-spending group Americans for Prosperity did, too, along with Heritage Action. But at the outset of the 2014 cycle, there’s no organization that provokes more frustration among GOP elites than the Club, and no electoral force with the same potential to wreak havoc on establishment-backed candidates.

In an interview with POLITICO, Club for Growth president Chris Chocola said the group views the fiscal cliff debate as a crucible for the Republican Party’s 2014 lineup.

“If we do things that make people uncomfortable or angry, that’s OK. But if we do things that surprise people, that’s not OK,” Chocola said. “Members of Congress understand what we do and why we do it. The fact that we watch these races, I think, has a positive impact on their voting patterns. I think that the discussion or the votes taken during the whole fiscal cliff and debt ceiling debates will be instructive. I think they will give context to the primary season.”

Asked to defend the Club’s involvement in contested, bloody primaries, Chocola responded by naming the group’s most-celebrated success stories: “I’ll give you three names: [Pennsylvania Sen. Pat] Toomey, [Florida Sen. Marco] Rubio and [Texas Sen. Ted] Cruz. But for the Club, we might not know those names.” In 2010, the Club also endorsed South Carolina Sen.-designate Tim Scott in his first congressional primary.

“It’s a fact that the Club for Growth supported those candidates when almost no one else did,” Chocola said. “People want to throw out [failed 2010 Nevada Senate candidate Sharron] Angle and Mourdock, that’s fine. We supported those candidates. And they lost.”

One Club for Growth strategist put an even finer point on it, saying flatly that it’s not the group’s problem to worry about the overall GOP win-loss record. Nor is the Club concerned about the damage it inflicts on its foes in primaries even if it hobbles them for the general election. That’s what happened last summer in the Wisconsin Senate primary, when the Club savaged former Gov. Tommy Thompson in order to boost an unsuccessful primary challenger, sending Thompson into the fall battered and drained of funds.